Sports Analytics: How Data Analytics Is Changing The Game Strategy?

November 19, 2018

We have witnessed how Big Data and its analysis have reshaped operation of many businesses. Recognizing the facts of big data analytics courses, the true scope of data analysis, the sports world making use of analytics. As we speak, the world of sports is improving its capabilities using sports analytics.

So, What Is Sports Analytics?

Sports analytics can be roughly translated to the use of data related to sports such as statistics of players, Weather conditions, pitch information, etc. to create predictive models to make informed decisions. The primary objective of sports analysis is to improve team performance. Sports analytics is also used to understand and maintain the fan-base of big teams.

The Sports Analytics was brought to the public eyes in 2011 by a movie called “Money ball” featuring attempts of Oakland Athletics Baseball team’s 2002 season. The coach, Billy Beane restored the team using empirical data and statistical analyses on players’ performance. He used trials with sabermetrics to improve his team and ended up finishing at the first place American League West on that season. Today with the advancement in Big Data technology every sports team are crunching data to gain a competitive advantage.

Changing the Strategy

Sports analyzers nowadays use wearable devices to collect data from players. The miCoach is such a wearable device developed by Adidas. This device attached to players jersey records data like heart rate, speed, and acceleration of the player. Analyzing this data, the team management is able to select the suiting players for the game. It also enables them to track the condition of players and allow them to rest before they get injured.

Video analytics is also being increasingly used across various sports for collecting data. In the NBA games, a company named SportsVU installed 6 cameras around the arena. Using advanced metrics, they were able to produce information about which move and which shots are best suited for each player. Such analytical results help teams to derive game strategies matching the strength of their players.

The same is used to learn about the players of the opposite team’s players to find their weakness. Arsenal is one of the major football clubs to make huge investments in big data analytics courses. They use a system which tracks 1.4 million data points per game and analyses all the data using an automated algorithm.

The Future of Sports Analytics

Without any doubt, sports analytics will continue to evolve, and the game strategies will heavily rely on the insights from the analysis than instinct. The next breakthrough sports world expecting from analytics is in the area of predicting a player’s mental ability to adjust with the rigors of the professional sports world. There are already researches about finding the correlation between emotional regards of responsibility and on-field performance.

The current analysis is not capable of measuring an athlete’s desire to be the top performer. Lack of such features brings a slight chance for drafting busts. Looking at the rate at which the sports analytics have grown to today’s state, It is sure that more of these data-driven advancements in sports can be expected in the upcoming years.